San Jose

Current and Future San Jose Mayors Come Together to Celebrate Thanksgiving, Address Homelessness

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The past and future of San Jose leadership came together Tuesday.

The city’s current and future mayor both gathered at a holiday event addressing homelessness and housing. 

Mayor Sam Liccardo and mayor-elect Matt Mahan came together to serve a holiday meal for the residents of Evan’s Lane. 

It’s one of the tiny homes projects for the homeless that opened last year and has already served 244 people. 

All of them live inside temperature-controlled family units until they transition to permanent housing. 

Each home has four beds, a closet and two bathrooms. 

While the service was all smiles, Liccardo said that this site is one solution to homelessness that is working.

There are three of those in San Jose, and another one is opening in a matter of days near the police department. 

“With a council vote, hopefully next week, we’ll be able to say we have 1,000 of these units under development here in the city of San Jose,” said Liccardo. “We know this is a faster way, a more nimble way for us to serve our unhoused residents.”

Housing and the homeless have long been described as the city’s biggest issues.

“The truth is, we have often been in the way in government and made it too difficult to build housing,” said Mahan when asked what he’ll do to tackle these problems moving forward. “We have to speed up permitting, keep fees under control, streamline our review processes and help those who want to build the housing we desperately need do so.”

And with significant pushback from many neighborhoods, is it possible to get other projects like this done?  

“We’re not just bringing forward a site like this to help those who are unhoused. We are, but it’s good for the whole community,” said Mahan. “We see a cleaner city, a safer city … the more we invest in these kinds of solutions the better off we all are and I think it’s incumbent upon us as elected officials to make that case to a public that is understandably skeptical.”

The families attending Tuesday’s meal said they’re happy to have a catered Thanksgiving meal.

The hope now is that the city’s newly-elected leaders can find lasting solutions to make meals like this less necessary.

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